But let me give you a pretty simple example. Let’s suppose we’ve got a bunch of muggers who like to use steel pipes when they mug people. But some muggers say, gosh, you know, we don’t need to hurt them that badly to rob them. Let’s put foam pads on our pipes. Then we’ll just stun them for a while, rob them and go away. So if the pope then said, well, yes, I think that using padded pipes is actually a little step in a moral direction there, that doesn’t mean he’s justifying using padded pipes to mug people. He’s just saying, well, they did something terrible, but while they were doing that, they had a little flicker of conscience there that led them in the right direction. That may grow further, so they stop mugging people completely.

Side topic: is the Catholic Church revealing that sin is a problem of moral hazard or adverse selection?

2 comments

What does it mean for padded pipes to be less sinful than steel pipes? I thought the catholic church uses a two-state automaton: sin and absolution. The initial state is “sin”, while the transitions are deterministic:
1. You are absolved by confessing or receiving last rites
2. You sin by…well… see Leviticus

Perhaps this is saying that the transitions are actually stochastic, so padded pipes lead to a lower probability of you entering “sin”. A small step towards APS, but a long way from an optimal mechanism if we want peace on earth.